Partial and total actuator faults accommodation for input-affine nonlinear process plants

In this paper, a new fault-tolerant control system is proposed for input-affine nonlinear plants based on Model Reference Adaptive System (MRAS) structure. The proposed method has the capability to accommodate both partial and total actuator failures along with bounded external disturbances. In this methodology, the conventional MRAS control law is modified by augmenting two compensating terms. One of these terms is added to eliminate the nonlinear dynamic, while the other is reinforced to compensate the distractive effects of the total actuator faults and external disturbances. In addition, no Fault Detection and Diagnosis (FDD) unit is needed in the proposed method. Moreover, the control structure has good robustness capability against the parameter variation. The performance of this scheme is evaluated using a CSTR system and the results were satisfactory. (C) 2013 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.